Lana Del Rey’s Feminist Problem

Part of the intrigue of Lana Del Rey's breakout “Video Games” was its two-sided nature. It's ostensibly a love song in which the singer rhapsodizes devotion to her man (“Heaven is a place on Earth with you/Tell me all the things you want to do”), but there's a stinging quality to both the words and her blasé delivery: “Open up a beer/And you say get over here…It's you, it's you, it's all for you/Everything I do.” It's unclear who's being played: the guy, who might actually think he's worth her time, or Del Rey, deluded and desperate enough to stay with somebody who's so clearly no good for her.

This slippery question of identity and intention is also, of course, what's made Del Rey the center of a national conversation in recent months. Simply put, Del Rey isn't the singer the viral “Video Games” had led people to believe she was—the “authentic” singer-songwriter ingénue plucked out of obscurity based on the merits of a DIY music video. Her Lana Del Rey persona is the latest incarnation of several years spent putting in time in the industry. Nor is she the kind of pop artist we've come to expect these days—the primetime-savvy vessel of club-ready hits. She's awkward in interviews and on stage, with a high-pitched speaking voice and vampy mannerisms, expertly imitated by Kristen Wiig on Saturday Night Live last week. She seems to be both trying too hard and not trying hard enough, stoking questions about whether she even means any of what she's singing.

Del Rey isn't the pop star we've come to expect in at least one other sense: The songs on her new album, Born to Die, aren't only small—they're powerless. Which is to say, she writes about women who are unhinged and consumed by the love their men provide. “Off to the Races” may be the skeeviest track ever written about a horse race: Del Rey quotes Lolita (“Light of my life, fire of my loins”), pinches her voice into what seems like a parody of Betty-Boop femininity, demands gold coins from her “old man,” gets wasted on “Bacardi chasers,” risks time at Rikers Island, and finally asks that same old man to save her. It's a thrilling, twisted vision of love gone off the deep end.

Del Rey's references are a mix of contemporary and outmoded, conjuring '50s glamor and hard-knock hip-hop with phrases like “chasing paper.” She refreshes the hopeless starlet with a pose of confidence, as on “Radio,” in which she boasts, “Now my life is sweet like cinnamon/Like a fucking dream I'm living in.” But it's hard to believe her swagger for very long, as relationships and good times crumble all around her. By the time you get to the album's closer, the strangely poignant “This Is What Makes Us Girls,” on which she laments, “We don't stick together 'cause we put love first,” you might start to think Del Rey has internalized the same self-reproach of Erica Jong's “Alcestis on the Poetry Circuit”: “For who can hate her half so well as she hates herself?”

Even casual Top 40 listeners have become conditioned to the almost bludgeoning sense of self-empowerment in pop music today. Nicki Minaj is her own bionic sex doll, an ideal exaggerated to the point of masculine aggression. Katy Perry asks to see her man's “peacock,” and even when she's telling him to put his hands on her “skin-tight jeans,” it's pretty clearly who's in the driver's seat. Lady Gaga…well, you get the point. Nowhere else in mass culture have young people, especially women, been allowed to feel so unvexed about their desires, even if those desires are constrained to the relatively superficial, glitter-sprayed longings of a Ke$ha rager: “We're taking control/We get what we want/We do what you don't.”

Del Rey sings as a woman who doesn't know what she wants. She's compelled to a luxurious, romantic life, but conveys its inevitable sadness. Last year, the Weeknd was rightly criticized for its portrayal of women. What started as vague lasciviousness on “What You Need” became outright stalker confessions on Echoes of Silence, the Weeknd's third album. Abel Tesfaye had fully redirected his player's angst onto the object of his desire. Del Rey flips that dynamic, framing the story from the point of view of the girl who sticks around, trying to enjoy a fabulous party that ends up making her feel more empty and alone than anything else.

Del Rey's been called anti-feminist, though for what reason I still can't discern. She wears sexy clothes? She sings sad songs about wanting love so badly it might kill her? From this self-serious understanding of feminism, I wonder how Tori Amos's “Me and a Gun” would fare today. Yes, I just compared Lana Del Rey to Tori Amos, not only because I can imagine the former writing a song about being forced to off her rapist because she's hasn't “seen Barbados.” I still don't know exactly what kind of singer Del Rey wants to be, which pose of hers is the right one, but I do know that, like Amos, she shows us a version of female desire that we're not used to hearing, one that's genuinely felt on Born to Die. For a pop singer, that's rare enough.

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You lefties are trying way too hard to take Lana down. There is something about her songs that scares the shit out of you.

Posted by arrow2010 on 2015-02-11 13:55:17

Fantastic writing in the second paragraph

Posted by Nick on 2014-06-06 18:30:36

Ooh, that second paragraph, nice!

Posted by Claire on 2014-06-06 13:54:59

Lana Del Rey is a very important part of our cultural mix. Her songs (so far) do not overtly express feminism but they do expose femininity, sometimes with enough brutal honesty that it may pain some devout feminists to listen. Her songs and her musicality- whether it be with that amazing voice or the string section floating over fat bass tones- offer up, to anyone who cares to take it, an emotional subtext that takes turns explaining that fragility and defiantly stating how it makes her feel.

She may or may not be a feminist, but anti-feminist she ain't. If one only pays attention to her lyrics, yeah, they might feel that way. But the singer is telling every feminist why they are one. Everyone of us has a perspective that rests on the edge of personal experience, staring down the cusp of meaning. Sharing that perspective artfully is never to be underestimated. Ms. Grant is on a journey. A feminist can both purr and roar.

Posted by Jasaga on 2014-06-04 19:08:44

She tries too hard.

Posted by Britnie on 2014-02-11 13:56:35

Thank you. I love this girl for being crazy, needy, contrictory and stunning.

"Ride" tthe movie has been slaged off for being anti feminist but she's not making self help videos she's telling a story and setting a challenge, fit in and be sane or have total freedom and be called crazy. Yes she's misrible most of the time but she's felt freedom a good little carreer girl or wife could never feel' and are they any happier? Is this a ruined woman or a crazy Shaman who's been to the depths? She uses ugly men because they're the people who have less to lose, nobody is telling them to be good and perfect so they help her be herself not a plastic wraped doll.

She gives a view of the world all those half dressed super girls never could, she's shy and introvert but shines a bit brighter. I don't care if she's outragous, I love her daydreamy world and it's great she lets the rest of us be part of it. Mental health problems, so what, we need crazy artists.

Holy shit, SHE SINGS ABOUT WHAT SHE'S BEEN THROUGH. Wow, ignorant cunts.

Posted by Julia Olivero on 2013-05-14 19:43:30

Agreed 100%. Great review.
Great enough to have someone copy part of it and claim it as their own when asked their opinion of Lana del Rey.
http://www.formspring.me/emiliva/q/347411149899194705
She felt "inspired"...I'll bet she did. And not just by your piece...the majority of that review comes from another site's intake on Lana del Rey being anti-feminist.
As someone who had read both prior to reading her reply...I knew her response felt awfully familiar.Posted by Anonymous on 2012-07-13 03:13:36

Really cool take. I had written her off as a ditzy vocalist who lucked out by not ruining a production-room masterpiece. I will reconsider, but you know what? A singer has to be able to sing, regardless of her intentions, otherwise she's just a face for a production team. And that's where I am, right now.Posted by felonious punk on 2012-02-09 17:12:05